Slusarczyk on Scorsese 19: An Analysis of Raging Bull

In this film a man tries to become boxing champion of the world. He has to defeat the current champion to become champion, but he struggles to get that fight. Some gangsters tell his brother that they can get him into the fight if he loses a certain fight.

It is his brother’s job to organize his fights so his brother should have found another way. But his brother likely profited from Jake, the man, losing intentionally as well. He knew Jake was going down. Why would you not bet on him? The brother probably bet everything he had on Jake losing the fight.

And then he becomes rich. And then why not do it all the time? Lose every fight intentionally and they’ll be rich. This film is about profit.

And Jake profits off his boxing. He ends up with a nice house with a pool. He has so much money he can buy his own club. Jake makes loads of money boxing. But then he retires. All sportsmen have to retire one day. You get older and weaker, and you have to retire. Old people cannot compete with young people.

If you box when you’re old, you’ll just lose every fight. When you box you risk yourself physically. You could get beaten up so badly you end up in a wheelchair. You could get beaten up so badly you die. People risk it all when they step into the ring. So why do it? Why risk your life? They risk their life because they are getting paid to risk their life.

Everyone wants to be a sportsman. People want to be sportsmen because sportsmen are rich. People want to be artists because of money as well. If binmen became millionaires everyone would want to be a binman.

There is little intrinsically appealing about sports or arts. Look at boxing for example. Every time you box you could get hit too hard and then you’ll die. People risk their lives. Why would you do that? Why would you risk your life?

They do it because they get paid lots to do it. But they really do it because they are good enough to do it. If you are good enough to box professionally you would do it regardless of the risks. Boxers just get paid so much money. They go into the ring, and they come out millionaires. You’d have to be an idiot to be able to box professionally and then not do it.

Everyone would do it for the money so the sport can be really selective about who they let box. They only let people who are amazing at boxing box. And how do you become amazing at boxing? You become amazing at boxing by practicing. That is how you get good at anything. The more you practice boxing the better you get at it.

So it is their own fault that they are good at boxing. They chose to practice every day. They could have got good at anything. If they had spent all the time, they spent boxing playing football they would have got good at playing football. Why didn’t they do that? Why didn’t they spend their life practicing football instead?

They practiced boxing because they liked boxing. They liked watching boxing on the TV. They didn’t practice football because they didn’t like football.

So there has to be an interest. You will never work hard enough if you are not serious about that thing. And people are only serious about stuff they like, stuff they enjoy. So why do people box? Do they like getting hurt?

Do they like hurting other people?
It is more likely they like hurting people than they like getting hurt. You would have to be really weird to like getting hurt. But at the same time, you would have to be really weird to like hurting other people. So, either way the people boxing are a little weird.

Maybe they would hurt me for calling them weird. Maybe they just like causing people pain. Maybe it is all a sick game to them. And it is a sick game. Paying people millions of pounds to beat other people half to death is sick.

But they get the millions of pounds. The point of this film is ‘being bad is very profitable’. And the most money any of them make during the film is when Jake loses the fight on purpose. They all make millions of pounds because Jake is bad intentionally. And who makes the most money? The gangsters make the most money. They are the ones who bet the most, so they are the ones who make the most money. The people in the film who make the most money are the worst people in it.

 

Slusarczyk on Scorsese 45: An Analysis of Gangs of New York

A Slusarczyk Splice is when you combine minor themes to create a major theme. Three minor themes in this film are war, death, and youth. The film is about war because it is a story of a war between two gangs. The film is about death because the whole film is one guy trying to kill another guy because he killed a third guy. The film is about youth because it starts with the most important thing that happened during the main character’s youth.

So, we have the themes death, war, and youth, but none of those themes are major themes. To get a major theme we have to do a Slusarczyk Splice and combine the three themes. So, we combine the three themes, and we get the major theme ‘young people dying in a war’, and that is what the film is really about.

When making art we go the other way and do a Slusarczyk Split. We would want to make a film about ‘young people dying in a war’ so we would split that major theme into the minor themes ‘youth’, ‘war’, and ‘death’.

It is always the young people who die in the wars. Only people in peak physical condition fight in wars so it is 18–30-year-olds. Even 30 is ridiculously young. It is mainly young people who die in wars.

That point is driven home in the film because you can buy your way out of the draft. If you get drafted, you can pay $300 and you don’t have to go to war. That means the old people don’t have to go to war. Everyone gets richer as they get older. Most people retire with thousands and thousands in the bank. They had nothing when they started working but now, they have thousands. Most people retire with so much money that they can live off that money for decades. Old people are generally much richer than younger people so saying people can buy their way out of the draft means the draft doesn’t affect older people. If it doesn’t affect older people, it only affects the young. The film is about young people dying in wars.

And that is the great tragedy of wars. Ignoring the army entirely the worst thing that happens in wars is that young people die. When a war is happening, armies run around a town or city blowing stuff up and shooting stuff. The worst part of that isn’t the property damage, it is the fact that sometimes children die. Sometimes children get caught in an explosion. Sometimes children get hit by stray bullets. The worst thing about wars is young people die and there are always wars and there are always young people dying in those wars.

But at the start of the film the main villain The Butcher spares the life of the main character. The main character is only a child at the time. He spares the child’s life because the war isn’t being fought anymore. The war was a battle between The Butcher and Amsterdam’s, the child’s, father, and The Butcher has already defeated Amsterdam’s father. So, the second The Butcher defeats Amsterdam’s father the war is over and then it wouldn’t be fair to kill the child if there wasn’t a war going on.

Because killing children is kind of accepted during a war. It is part of the collateral damage. The people in charge know that children die during wars, but they fight the wars anyway. They know if they invade a country children will die but they invade anyway. The people in power think they are allowed to kill children if there is a war going on.

But the war ends before The Butcher can kill Amsterdam. So, he sends Amsterdam away to get educated at some kind of monastery or something. When Amsterdam gets out of that place, he is free to do whatever he wants. He could leave the city. He could leave the country. He does neither of those things. He goes back to where he is from, and he faces The Butcher again. He befriends The Butcher and sets into motion an extensive plan that will lead to him trying to kill The Butcher. So young people die in war but when they do not die it is very bad for the people fighting the war.

War creates terrorism. If you go to a country and blow up some buildings, you kill some people. If you kill someone’s parents when they are five or six, they will grow up and they will be angry so they will try to find you and kill you.

The terrible thing about war is not that children die it is that if you want to truly win the war you have to kill everyone. The film ends with a shot of the Twin Towers. Those towers were destroyed by people who were wronged by America when they were children.

There is a woman. Every evening, she takes long baths. She loves lying in the water and thinking about her life. She lies there for ages and ages but then the water is too cold, so she gets out. When she got in the water was hot but now it is so cold it is like ice.

She goes downstairs and she puts the TV on, and she watches a film about a princess. In the film the princess cannot choose who to marry so she decides to not marry anyone. It is better to do nothing than to make a mistake.

I am like this woman because I am also confused about where to go next.